Any advice for getting clients?

I am starting my own local seo company and we are brand new. So I don't have any testimonials or any previous clients. Right now I'm just focusing on my local state. I have tried sending out multiple emails to local businesses but haven't heard anything back.

My firm works with companies who are seeking to generate leads. (Insurance, Accountants, Printers, Consultants, Chiropractors, Gyms, etc..) What we do is produce a non-sales webinar addressing an issue your market already has and understands it's a problem. Our clients would sponsor the webinar, perhaps charge a small fee to attend (helps qualify the leads) and then we show them how to convert attendees to sales.

My business partner and I conduct the webinar on behalf of our client. Introduce our client to the attendees. Let's the client interact with the attendees. In essence, gives the attendees an opportunity to meet with our client and get to know them before any talk about sales.

You might think of doing something similar. Keep in mind, the reason this works is because most business owners really don't know what SEO and the rest is all about. This simply confuses them and they've heard things in their associations about people losing money. So, instead of going through the front door which is barred and locked. You go in the side entrance.

Just a thought...

You address an issue they already know they have and they're struggling with. This is something familiar. Once you've helped them solve a problem they are more open to listening to what other problems you can solve for them.

pick 2 or 3 local charities, they always need help. Just set up analytics and help start tracking conversions. Have them right nice things on yelp for you, take some pics and be that "hero" The local seo game has evolved. Be sure to offer killer services.

Thanks everybody for your suggestions. I am sending out 32 letters tomorrow hopefully and I will just have to see how that goes. I have done a simple version of 7878's letters, but I tailored it to local SEO.

Join Fiverr and post for doing seo.. do basic stuff for $5 but let clients know what else you can do for regular rates.
Just an I dea.. btw there are other sites like forfifty.com.. and for100 but forget urls.. same as Fiverr but highr prices.
google for microworker sites

You will want to call businesses and make sure they pick up the phone.
If it is not the boss picking up the phone, they are QUALIFIED!
Why? Because that means they are serious about getting business!

Go to google maps and type in your city state then add service.
Ex: Los Angeles CA Service

You can then decide to walk in their shop to meet them in person.
Do not try to sell your services. You just want to meet the owner.
Ask if has any dreams about growing and how big.
If they are cool, you then may decide to schedule a meeting.
Why? Because you are creating a long-term relationship.

The meeting is not about your service, it is about growing their business.
And to do that, you will need to print this out and educate them.

A internet lead is 80% more likely to become a REPEAT CUSTOMER.

Print this list out below and it will give them a better understanding.

Prove beyond a reasonable doubt that what you do makes money for your clients and that you can quantify it.
Break this down into EASY to understand information.
Do something to get the attention of your prospect (free leads/lumpy mail/dollar bill letters)
Show them the proof.

Make the proof so obvious they'd have to be a moron not to use you.

Ask yourself these questions:

If you were in there shoes, were swamped all day trying to run your business, and yet another (in their eyes) "internet geek/dork" approached you about something you know you need to do, but are so swamped with just trying to survive, why should they listen to you?

The second you, in my opinion, start talking about SEO their eyes glaze over. What you want to talk about is MONEY and how you will make them more money.

Sup homie, grats on getting yourself situated. Although these forums are way awesome, and ya'll have mega smart angles, we normally cant reply. In this case we can, here is some advice from the SEO biz angle. We get handfuls of organic leads a week using these tactics alone:

Overwhelm the hell outta OP's:
- Always post too much and too complex information. This will show them the complete detailed route, but 95% wont be able to keep up and ask you for help at one point or another. Little do they know alot of your steps combine into 1 step. Nothing says you cant make 1 obvious step into 3 other steps...people have ADD and/or get lost easy.
- By overwhelming with complex information this makes content for your forums or your own corp blog.
- By 3rd party Forum posting these guides, this leaves a signature for epic "omg im lost please help, can you just do it for me" emails.
- In 3rd party forums, you can drop links to your corp blog as well as spin there -- content doublekill, just make sure the platform forums are indexed.

Make free SEO plugins with your branding all over them, but keep them limited so they need to ask you to extend:
- Find popular ecom carts and develop proper (singular) analytics, conversion, and adwords goal tracking.
- Figure your route to multi-domain custom analytics within the single GA script (for enterprises)
- Develop a bare bones organization RDF snippet (no one does organization right, nested...multisite...POS...)
- Develop category looping RDF, bare bones product page RDF (leave out the reviews desc as data)
- Develop a means to run SSL always links/src/resources at software level + inject strict secure header at index level
- Offer all of these in extension markets for FREE - spin the desc, imply you can do tons more and these are just starting points

Do your part, represent legit, kill the india SEO spammers:**
- Make a syslog + html log honeypot, something named welcome.php. All it needs to do is write time + FORWARDED_FOR + _ADDR to a log.
- Reply to all SEO spam with the link masked as a bait link, either literally and/or as img src inject.
- Wait for them to read it for logs to trickle in, ban everything in site + submit their corp ISP/IP to blacklists.
- Rejoice as both your competition decreases, gets filled with junk data, and your clients filter less SEO email as spam.

** Note india SEO spammers are ruining legit SEO consultants. We must destroy them together. I have a honeypot that can help you with this if anyone is interested...

Prove beyond a reasonable doubt that what you do makes money for your clients and that you can quantify it.
Break this down into EASY to understand information.
Do something to get the attention of your prospect (free leads/lumpy mail/dollar bill letters)
Show them the proof.

Make the proof so obvious they'd have to be a moron not to use you.

Ask yourself these questions:

If you were in there shoes, were swamped all day trying to run your business, and yet another (in their eyes) "internet geek/dork" approached you about something you know you need to do, but are so swamped with just trying to survive, why should they listen to you?

The second you, in my opinion, start talking about SEO their eyes glaze over. What you want to talk about is MONEY and how you will make them more money.

Click to expand...

And I think another mistake many SEO's make is they allow the potential client to control the conversation. And the client is only worried about "how much" is it going to cost me. If you give in and answer that question BEFORE you have established your VALUE then you just lost that client.

Head over to Google. Type your area plus a business sector. On the right you'll see people who are willing to spend money on what you do. Contact them.

3. The Offer

Tell them

- You're a new agency (they appreciate honesty);
- Tell them where you live (you're less faceless this way)
- Give them SEO examples;
- Tell them once they rank, they no longer need to spend money on Adwords;
- Tell them you're building your portfolio and you will do the work cheaply and quickly with money-back guarantee.

Do the above every day and you'll never go hungry. I have a similar agency (not bragging, but one pie among many) and, though these days I'm pretty hands off, well, very hands off, this is how I got the ball rolling. I had more business than I could handle and soon expanded to employees, etc.

And I think another mistake many SEO's make is they allow the potential client to control the conversation. And the client is only worried about "how much" is it going to cost me. If you give in and answer that question BEFORE you have established your VALUE then you just lost that client.

Click to expand...

This. He may only have 4 posts, but he is right. Control that conversation. But in the UK, do not 'sell' it, the soft approach is best, sell YOU. But do notlet them control the conversation.

Note that adblockers might block our captcha, and other functionality on BHW so if you don't see the captcha or see reduced functionality please disable adblockers to ensure full functionality, note we only allow relevant management verified ads on BHW.